Although there have been reports that the bill’s death penalty provisions have been dropped, the Obama administration disputes that claim which has falsely been promised by the bill’s backers in the past.

The New Apostolic Reformation has been in the news a great deal since Rick Perry first announced his prayer rally, The Response. Sarah Posner has an investigative journalist’s view of this movement, its place in religious movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, and in politics. Here she is in conversation with Anthea Butler, a scholar of American religious history.

The people who gathered at Reliant Stadium are not just Rick Perry’s spiritual army, raised up, as Perry and others imagine it, in the spirit of Joel 2 to sound an alarm and prepare the people for Judgment Day. They are the ground troops the religious right set out four decades ago to create, and duplicate over generations, for the ongoing culture wars.